coarsen

"If we are interested in the distribution of small-scale objects, we have to work against this natural tendency for things to coarsen," Bellon explains.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2023

It’s not just that they coarsen the culture, though that’s bad enough.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 21, 2021

It’s a progressive degeneration from pop culture to further dumb down and coarsen our popular taste.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 26, 2019

But it also adds new incidents, characters and depth, with a contemporary wit that doesn’t coarsen the story — or not much, anyway.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 13, 2017

‘Motherogod! She’s not but four. It’s liable to scare her. And besides, permanents tend to coarsen the hair.’

From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

But there is nothing better about this “Cat Person,” which coarsens, flattens and torturously over-elaborates a story whose elegant concision was precisely what made it such rich and elastic interpretive fodder.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2023

Even as Twitter frays and coarsens under Musk’s ownership, it’s still possible to have fun with others, one of the few things that keeps users from leaving.

From New York Times ● Jan. 20, 2023

It coarsens public discourse, distracts from the real issues and prevents solutions.

From Washington Times ● Nov. 14, 2017

It erases nuance, coarsens thought, turns into a game of “Telephone” in which original meaning becomes hopelessly garbled with every successive retweet.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 26, 2017

I never stoop to that habit of profane language which unfortunately coarsens our profession.

From The Devil's Disciple by Shaw, Bernard

In today’s coarsened climate, fretting about rules of politeness seems futile.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 23, 2026

To say our politics have coarsened over the past few decades is like noting that temperatures drop and daylight shortens as we settle into autumn.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2022

“Hasn’t our national debate been coarsened enough, and shouldn’t we appreciate the old-school attributes of somebody like Bob Mueller, who declined to engage in hand-to-hand combat with 140 characters?” asked Sandick.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 11, 2019

There’s an argument that coarsened culture requires even more gruesome photographs to rouse our numbed humanity.

From New York Times ● Mar. 3, 2018

Her skin had coarsened a bit over the years, he thought.

From "Krik? Krak!" by Edwidge Danticat

The coarsening and outright collapse of public standards this millennium is so astonishing that it is hard to describe the world back then to “digital natives.”

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 23, 2026

In her recent New York Times article about the "coarsening" of the religious right, Ruth Graham alluded to this, writing about the trend of evangelical leaders using "vulgarities."

From Salon ● Apr. 1, 2024

This is called arrested coarsening behavior and was an unexpected result.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2023

The threats are not simply an issue of coarsening of the national discourse.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 11, 2023

Now he was used to such things, a roadside commonplace, but back then, before the coarsening and general numbness, when it was a novelty and when everything was new, he felt it sharply.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan